The two boys spoke Italian; Luigi knew no English.
“Why, I look as I’m made. Everybody looks as they’re made, don’t they?” said Maso, surprised.
“Ah, but expression is a beautiful thing—a sympathetic countenance,” said Luigi, waving his hand. “Now you—you might smile more. Promise me to try a smile at the next place where we go in to ask.”
“Like this?” said Maso. And stopping, he slapped his leg violently, and gave a deep, long, sardonic laugh. “I saw a man once who did it like that,” he explained.
“Well! If you should go in and ask for a place and do that—well, I don’t know what they would do to you!” said Luigi, standing still, amazed.
“I didn’t want to do it; you made me,” answered Maso, nettled.
“I told you to smile with an amiability—a sweetness; I didn’t tell you to slap your leg and yell out like that,” Luigi remonstrated, taking off his hat and wiping his hot forehead. “Come; here’s a window with nice looking-glasses; practise a little, and I’ll stand behind and tell you when it’s right.”
And Maso, standing close to the window, smiled with an amiability—a sweetness. The reflection of his freckled face in the tilted mirror, giving back these grins, was something unearthly. But both of the boys were far too much in earnest to notice that.
“This one will do, I think,” said Luigi, doubtfully—“at least, it’s the best. I’ve got to go now, but look in at the shop before you take the train back. Are you hungry? I know a place where things are good and not dear; I’ll take you there myself.”
This was Luigi’s Italian hospitality; he would show Maso his own particular trattoria. But Maso was not hungry.
At three o’clock he appeared at Luigi’s shop. Luigi was dusting goblets. “Well?” he said, inquiringly.
Maso shook his head.
“Didn’t you smile?”
“Yes, I did it as I took off my hat. And every time they seemed so surprised.”
“I’ve a new idea, Maso; behold it: the consul of your country!”
“Is there one in Leghorn?” asked Maso, vaguely.
“Of course there is; I have seen the sign many a time.” And Luigi mentioned the street and the number.
The proprietor of the shop, who was packing a case of the slender Epiphany trumpets, now broke one by accident, and immediately scolded Luigi in a loud voice; Maso was obliged to make a hasty departure.
The office of the representative of the United States government was indicated by a painted shield bearing the insignia of the republic, and a brass plate below, with the following notification: “Consolato degli Stati-Uniti d’America.” The first word of this inscription rouses sometimes a vague thrill in the minds of homesick Americans in Italy coming to pay a visit to their flag and the eagle. The thrill, however, is immediately followed by a conviction that whatever the syllables may mean (in an unintelligible land), they do not foreshadow, probably, anything so solacing as they appear at first to indicate. Consolato—a consoling-place; if it were indeed that, the bare room would soon be as celebrated as is in Jerusalem the Wailing-place of the Jews. To Maso, however, there was no double meaning. He glanced at the flag; then he went up the stairs and knocked at the door.
As it happened, the consul himself was there alone. Maso, upon entering, took off his hat and tried his smile, then he began: “If you please, I am trying to get a place—something to do. I thought perhaps, sir, that you might—”
He stopped, and in his embarrassment put the toe of his shoe into a hole in the matting, and moved it about industriously.
“Don’t spoil my matting,” said the consul. “You’re a very young boy to be looking for a place.”
“I’m going on fourteen.”
“And of what nation are you?” demanded the consul, after another survey.
“Why, I’m American,” said Maso, surprised.
“I shouldn’t have taken you for one. What is your name?”
“Maso—I mean Thom-as Ross Coe,” replied the boy, bringing out the syllables with something of an Italian pronunciation.
“Tummarse Errosco? Do you call that an American name?”
“I’ll write it,” said Maso, blushing. He wrote it in large letters on the edge of a newspaper that was near him.
“Thomas R. Coe,” read the consul. “Coe is your name, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want something to do, eh? What do you want, and why do you come here for it?”
Maso told his story, or rather a tale which he had prepared on his way to the consulate. It was a confused narrative, because he did not wish to betray anything that could give a clew to his mother’s address.
The consul asked questions. “A failure, eh? What failure?”
“It—it wasn’t in Leghorn.”
“And your mother will be back in September? Where is she at present?”
“She—she is north; she isn’t very well, and—” But he could not think of anything that he could safely add, so he stopped.
“We haven’t any places for boys. Did you expect me to take you in here?”
“No, sir. I thought perhaps you’d recommend me.”
“On general principles, I suppose, as an American, seeing that I don’t know anything else about you. And you selected the Fourth as a nice, good, patriotic day for it?”
“The Fourth?”
“I suppose you know what day it is?”
“Yes, sir—Tuesday.”
The consul looked at him, and saw that he spoke in good faith. “You an American boy? I guess not! You may go.” And dipping his pen in the ink, he resumed his writing.
Maso, though disturbed and bewildered, held his ground. He certainly was an American boy. What could the man mean?
The consul, whose name was Maclean, was a lawyer from Michigan; a short, stout man of sixty, with a yellow skin, bright black eyes, and an old-fashioned black wig with a curled edge all round. “No use waiting, my friend,” he said, without looking up; “frauds don’t go down here.”
“I’m American. True as you live, I am,” said Maso, earnestly.
Something in his face made the consul relent a little. “Perhaps you’ve got some American blood hidden in you somewhere. But it must be pretty well thinned out not to know the Fourth of July! I suppose you’ve never heard of the Declaration of Independence either?”
A gleam of light now illumined the darkness of Maso’s mind. “Oh yes; I know now; in the History.” He rallied. “The Indians took a very bloody part in it,” he added, with confidence.
“Oh, they did, did they? Where were you brought up?”
“In Italy, most; a little in other places. I came abroad before I was two.”
“I see—one of the expatriated class,” said Maclean, contemptuously. He had a great contempt for Americans who leave their own country and reside abroad. The dialogue ended, after a little more talk, in his saying: “Well, you get me a note from your mother (I suppose you write to her?) telling me something more about you. Then I’ll see what I can do.” For the boy’s story had been a very vague one.
As Maso, heavy-hearted, turned towards the door, Maclean suddenly felt sorry for him. He was such a little fellow, and somehow his back looked so tired. “See here, my son,” he said, “here’s something for the present. No use telling you to buy fire-crackers with it, for they haven’t got ’em here. But you might buy rockets; can’t look out of the window summer nights in this place without seeing a lonely rocket shooting up somewhere.” He held out two francs.
Maso’s face grew scarlet. “I’d rather not, unless I can work for it,” he muttered. It was a new feeling to be taken for a beggar.
“You can work enough for that if you want to. There is a printed list on that desk, and a pile of circulars; you can direct them. Show me the first dozen, so that I can
see if they’ll pass.”
Maso sat down at the desk. He put his hat in six different places before he could collect his wits and get to work. When he brought the dozen envelopes for inspection, Maclean said:
“You seem to know Eyetalian well, with all these Eyetalian names. I can’t make head or tail of ’em. But as to handwriting, it’s about the worst I ever saw.”
“Yes, I know,” said Maso, ashamed. “I’ve never had regular lessons, ’cepting this summer, when—” He stopped; Mr. Waterhouse’s name would be, perhaps, a clew. He finished the circulars; it took an hour and a half.
The consul shook hands with him, the mechanical hand-shake of the public functionary. “You get me that note, and I’ll see.”
Maso went back to Pisa. When he arrived at his door in the Street of the Lily, the wife of the cobbler who lived on the ground-floor handed him a letter which the postman had left. The sight of it made the boy’s heart light; he forgot his weariness, and, climbing the stairs quickly, he unlocked his door and entered his room, Mr. Tiber barking a joyous welcome. Mr. Tiber had been locked in all day; but he had had a walk in the early morning, and his solitude had been tempered by plenty of food on a plate, a bowl of fresh water, and a rubber ball to play with. Maso sat down, and, with the dog on his knees, tore open his letter. It was directed to him at Pisa, in a rough handwriting, but within there was a second envelope, a letter from his mother, which bore the address of the hotel at the Bagni di Lucca, where she supposed that her son was staying with his tutor. She wrote regularly, and she sent polite messages to Waterhouse, regretting so much that his severe sprain prevented him from writing to her in reply. Maso, in his answers, represented himself as the most hopelessly stupid pupil old Longlegs had ever been cursed with; in the network of deception in which he was now involved he felt this somehow to be a relief. He had once heard an American boy call out to another who was slow in understanding something, “You’re an old gumpy;” so he wrote, “Longlegs yells out every day your an old gumpy,” which greatly astonished Mrs. Roscoe. The boy exerted every power he had to make his letters appear natural. But the task was so difficult that each missive read a good deal like a ball discharged from a cannon; there was always a singularly abrupt statement regarding the weather, and another about the food at the hotel; then followed two or three sentences about Longlegs; and he was her “affecshionate son Maso. P.S.—Mr. Tiber is very well.” He sent these replies to the Bagni; here his friend, the porter, taking off the outer envelope, which was directed to himself, put the letter within with the others to go to the post-office; in this way Maso’s epistles bore the postmark “Bagni di Lucca.” For these services Maso had given his second-best suit of clothes, with shoes and hat, to the porter’s young son, who had aspirations.
The present letter from Mrs. Roscoe was full of joyousness and jokes. But the great news was that she intended to make a tour in Switzerland in August, and as she missed her little boy too much to enjoy it without him, she had written urgently to America about money, and she hoped that before long (she had told them to cable) she could send for him to join her. Maso was wildly happy; to be with his mother again, and yet not to have her return to Italy before the important four months were over, that was perfect; he got up, opened his trunk, and refolded his best jacket and trousers with greater care, even before he finished the letter. For he wore now continuously his third-best suit, as the second-best had been left at the Bagni. At last, when he knew the letter by heart, he washed his face and hands, and, accompanied by Mr. Tiber, tail-wagging and expectant, he went down to get supper at the trattoria near by.
The next day he tried Pisa again, searching for employment through street after street. His mother had written that she hoped to send for him early in August. It was now the 5th of July, so that there were only four or five weeks to provide for; and then there would be his fare back to the Bagni. But his second quest was hardly more fortunate than the first. The only person who did not wave a forefinger in perspiring negative even before he had opened his lips was a desiccated youth, who, sitting in his shirt-sleeves, with his feet up and a tumbler beside him, gave something of an American air (although Maso did not know that) to a frescoed apartment in which Singer sewing-machines were offered for sale. This exile told him to add up a column of figures, to show what he could do. But when he saw that the boy was doing his counting with his fingers, he nodded him towards the door. “Better learn to play the flute,” he suggested, sarcastically.
Maso was aware that accountants are not in the habit of running a scale with the fingers of their left hand on the edge of their desks, or of saying aloud, “six and three are nine,” “seven and five are eleven,” and “nought’s nought.” He had caught these methods from his mother, who always counted in that way. He clinched his fingers into his palm as he went down the stairs; he would never count with them again. But no one asked him to count, or to do anything else. In the afternoon he sought the poorer streets; here he tried shop after shop. The atmosphere was like that of a vapor bath; he felt tired and dull. At last, late in the day, a cheese-seller gave him a hope of employment at the end of the week. The wages were very small; still, it was something; and refreshed by the thought, he went home (as he called it), released Mr. Tiber, and, as the sun was low, took him off for a walk. By hazard he turned towards the part of the town which is best known to travellers, that outlying quarter where the small cathedral, the circular baptistery, and the Leaning Tower keep each other company, folded in a protecting corner of the crenellated city wall. The Arno was flowing slowly, as if tired and hot, under its bridges; Pisa looked deserted; the pavements were scorching under the feet.
As the boy came up the broad paved walk that leads to the cathedral, he saw two ladies leaving the doorway at the base of the Leaning Tower; evidently they had been making the ascent. They went across to the baptistery to see the pulpit of Nicolo the Pisan. “Now they’re going to make the old shed howl,” he said to himself. This was the disrespectful way in which he thought of the famous echo.
At Pisa the atmosphere clothes the cathedral with a softness which no Northern marbles can ever hope to attain. The façade, perfect in proportion and beauty, rises with its columns and galleries from the greensward, facing the sculptured baptistery; on the other side the celebrated and fantastic tower for the bells stands, like a tree which has been made to slant by the furious wind, looking across the plain towards the sea.
Maso stretched himself on the grass under the façade of the cathedral. After a while the ladies came from the baptistery, and crossed to the Campo Santo. In the relaxation of the dull season the portal had been left open behind them, and the boy went over and wandered about within, carrying Mr. Tiber under his jacket, half concealed, as dogs are not allowed in the sacred enclosure. He looked at the frescos of Benozzo, at the “Last Judgment” and the “Triumph of Death.” He passed the celebrated sarcophagus without knowing what it was, his attention being more attracted by the modern monuments, the large marble figures, seated and standing, that stared down upon him with their unmoving white eyes. At last he sat down at the base of one of these figures to rest, for the air here was cool compared with the atmosphere outside. The two strangers, in their slow progress, looking at everything, guide-book in hand, had passed him once; now on their second round they stopped near him at the doorway, preparing for departure. “Well, there is nothing more to see in Pisa,” said one. “Thank Heaven! Pisa’s done. Now we can go on to Lerici.”
“We haven’t found those plates yet,” objected the other.
“What plates?”
“Why, don’t you remember? They say there are old majolica plates set in one of the campaniles here—trophies taken from the Moors ages ago. I’ve stared up at every campanile, and haven’t seen a sign. I wonder if that boy would know? What a forlorn-looking creature!”
Maso, in truth, in his third-best suit, and obliged to be economical regarding the bills of the cobbler
’s wife, who acted as his laundress, did not present an attractive appearance.
The lady, turning towards him, had begun, “Sapete uno posata in campanile—” But resenting her comment, Maso had risen and walked away.
“Evidently he isn’t Italian, for he doesn’t understand,” said the questioner, who was accustomed to declare that it was very easy for her to travel abroad, as she spoke “five languages equally well.” “Perhaps he is German—with that light hair.” She ran after him. “Tisch,” she called, “in thurm. Haben-sie gesehn ein?”
“I speak English,” said Maso, stopping.
“You’re never English, surely!”
“I’m American.”
“American? We are Americans; but I should never have taken you for one!” Then she asked her question about the plates. Maso had never heard of them; he told her so, and made his escape, going back to the grass under the façade. “Ugly old things,” he thought, “both of them! I just wish they could see mother.” And forgetting his own mortification, his heart swelled with pride as he recalled her pretty face and pretty step, and the general perfection of her appearance. Only four weeks or so and he should be with her! “Mr. Tiber, pim here. We’re going to Switzerland. Do you hear that? I shall take you in a basket and pretend you’s lunch. The nobil empress” (this character, in the dog language, was Mrs. Roscoe) “says you mut promit not to bark. But you can bark now. Hi! Mr. Tiber. Hi!”
And Mr. Tiber hied. And then, at the word of command, performed every trick he knew.
V
The cheese-shop was blazing with the light of four flaring gas-burners; the floor had been watered a short time before, and this made the atmosphere reek more strongly than ever with the odors of the smoked fish and sausages, caviare and oil, which, with the cheese, formed the principal part of the merchandise offered for sale. There was no current of air passing through from the open door, for the atmosphere outside was perfectly still. Tranquilly hovering mosquitoes were everywhere, but Maso did not mind these much; he objected more to the large black beetles that came noiselessly out at night; he hated the way they stood on the shelves as if staring at him, motionless save for the waving to and fro of their long antennæ. A boy came in to buy cheese. It was soft cheese; Maso weighed it, and put it upon a grape leaf. “It just gets hotter and hotter!” he remarked, indignantly. The Italian lad did not seem to mind the heat much; he was buttery with perspiration from morning until night, but as he had known no other atmosphere than that of Pisa, he supposed that this was the normal summer condition of the entire world. It was the 27th of August.
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